


The Anatomy of Your Umbrella

by KittyCatriona (War_Worn_Lipstick)



Category: Phan, Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dreams, Experimental, Fantasy, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Rain, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, and there's really nothing else about it, but it has a happy ending, but that's the only possible suicide inclination, dan mentions that he wants to die, if you've ever read my fics before you'll know that dan is always depressed, implied depression i guess, it's really lowkey, walking in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/War_Worn_Lipstick/pseuds/KittyCatriona
Summary: Phil starts meeting Dan in his dreams, and Dan misses the way the rain used to make him feel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> kind of an experiment in tenses and pov that is way too romantic

_Rain hadn’t meant anything_ to Dan when he’d been in London. That is to say, when it had rained while Dan had been in London, he hadn’t felt anything like he had felt when it had rained back where he had grown up. In his hometown, the rain had been filled with something indescribable, and all day or night when it had rained, Dan had felt an odd kind of cleanliness that he couldn’t get anywhere else.

It had been like—when the sky had been that pale grey that may as well have been white, and the leaves on the trees had been glistening in that dark, wet way—it had been like Dan could have drifted into the sky. It had been like his body was light and he could have been raised into the cold air by the rain, and everyone’s words had become muffled from the distance, and the power of music and thought had become stronger in the quiet. 

He had cried a lot when it had rained back home.

In London it had been drab and damp. He had sat at his window and watched the cars yank up the water from the puddles, and he had watched people scurrying with umbrellas to sooner find shelter, and he had tried to recapture that feeling he had gotten when it had rained in his hometown. He had thought about how overwhelmed he sometimes had been by the beauty of the rain, and he had thought about how a certain song once had completely twisted into something different when it had rained, and he had thought about how his fantasies had seemed so much more plausible when he could have looked up to the sky and seen a vast expanse of blankness. 

He had never cried when it had rained in London. In fact, he would have gone so far as to say that when it had rained in London, he had felt numb. 

But it had been in London, only two weeks after he had moved into his new flat, that the dreams had begun. 

They had started off easy—short and sweet and forgettable. In the first dream he had been sitting in a park on one of those deceitful days. The days that looked nice but were in reality quite cold. He hadn’t brought a jacket because it had looked so nice. The sky had been a bright blue and the grass hadn’t turned brown yet from the autumn. He had his hands in his lap and in his hands in his lap had been what looked like a half-finished knitting project. He had held a long, slender needle in each hand. The yarn had been lime green. 

There had been a man standing in front of him. The man had been wearing a brassy, yellow scarf, and it had been wrapped again and again around his neck, built up over his chin and lips. He had been staring at Dan. 

Upon waking Dan hadn’t been able to remember any specific details about the man, apart from the scarf and the fact that the man had seemed inexplicably familiar. The nagging kind of familiar. 

The man had said, “How are you?”

And Dan had replied, “Oh, I’m knitting.” 

And then when he had looked down at his handiwork, he had seen that the lime green yarn had become very tangled. 

“Do you like knitting?” the man had asked.

“I’m cold, so I thought I would make myself a hat,” Dan had said, frowning down at his tangled project. 

“Okay,” the man had said. 

Dan had woken up a few hours later. When he’d looked outside, he had seen a blue sky, and grass that had not yet died, and he had thought to himself, A Deceitful Day, and he had grabbed a jacket on his way out the door. 

The next few nights had featured small reappearances of the man in the brassy, yellow scarf, only he hadn’t been wearing the brassy, yellow scarf. By the end of the fifth night, Dan had been able to say this much about the man:

1\. he had had a full head of black hair,

2\. his chin and cheekbones had been quite defined,

3\. he had preferred to wear light, playful colors,

4\. and his eyes had been a cold but curious shade of Payne’s grey.

They had very specifically been Payne’s grey. 

On the sixth night, Dan had been intrigued. 

“Who are you?” he had asked. He and the man had been standing in an expansive, yellow meadow. There had been small, white flowers at his feet, but the tall and dry grass had shielded most of the other flowers from view. Encircling the meadow had been pillars of trees. The sky above them had warned of rain, and Dan quietly had wished that it would fall. 

The man had been holding an umbrella. He had slowly twisted the handle between his fingers, and Dan had watched the red canopy spin in the air. The man had said, “I’m a writer,” and Dan had nodded.

“I suppose I could have guessed that.” Dan hadn’t been sure why he’d said that. He’d had no idea of what the man could have possibly been. 

“It’s in the eyes, I think,” the man had said. “You can tell a writer by their eyes.” 

Dan had nodded a second time. “I can imagine.” 

He and the man had been standing at least five meters apart. Dan hadn’t thought the gap between them had been weird until after he’d woken up. 

*

 _In the London rain_ it had been difficult for Dan to distinguish between himself and the ground beneath his feet. Sometimes it had felt like his feet had melted into the pavement and each puddle had actually been bits of himself that he’d lost. 

He… hadn’t known why he’d felt that way. 

He had met with his mother one evening, in a coffee shop. She had been visiting London on work and thought it would have been nice to have seen her son. Somehow, they had gotten on the subject of dreams, and Dan had told her about the recurring man. 

Her eyes had been wide over the top of her mug. She had spoken into its mouth. “Your grandmother used to tell me stories about a girl she’d constantly dreamt about. She was apparently in every one of her dreams, and they got to know each other very well.”

“It’s so weird,” Dan had said.

His mother had shaken her head because she hadn’t finished her story. “They met one day, in real life, your grandmother and the girl. I don’t know for sure, but I think they had been in love.” 

“Like… in love in love?” Dan had asked. 

His mother had nodded slowly. “I believe so. Mum had never told me anything specifically, but the way she talked about that girl… I think they must have been.” 

“Wow,” Dan had said. “I never knew. What happened?” 

“Your grandmother married your grandfather. Had to, I think. She and the girl grew apart, then.” 

“Oh,” Dan had been quite disappointed. “That’s really a shame.”

“It is really a shame. You’re lucky,” Dan’s mother had said, meeting Dan with a powerful gaze. “I know things still aren’t great, but they’re not as bad as they could be.” 

Dan’s mother had known he was bisexual for a long time—since before he had turned ten years old. He had officially come out to her when he was fifteen, and she had been entirely supportive. Dan had always been very grateful for that.

There had been a long pause in the conversation, where both Dan and his mother had sipped from their coffee mugs and stared out the large bay window at the rainy streets, before Dan’s mother had said, “So keep your eye out for this boy of yours. He could be the love of your life.” And then she had flashed him a tight smile, which he had returned. 

After several months of dreams, Dan had learned the following things about the man: 

1\. he had some name that reminded Dan oddly of the Medieval Age,

2\. his eyes usually had been heavily lidded,

3\. he had enjoyed speaking often of his writing projects,

4\. his work-in-progress, a novel, had been about a young Girl Guide who had the power to walk through people’s minds,

5\. and he had not known, and had in fact pondered often, whether Dan had been real somewhere or if Dan had always just been a figment of his imagination. 

“You just,” the man had said, “have this tendency to appear very real to me.”

Dan had shrugged. “I suppose.” 

“Like,” the man had gone on, “I feel like the chances are high that you are an actual person that is dreaming about me, exactly like I’m dreaming about you. And if that’s the case, then you’re thinking—actually thinking—about me right now—not just seeing me—and when you wake up, you’ll think about me then, too.” 

“Oh, you are a writer,” Dan had grinned. 

The man had looked sheepish. “Shut up,” he’d said. 

“Do you think about me?” Dan had asked. “When you wake up?” 

The sheepishness had grown. “Very often.” 

Dan had taken a deep breath. “Yeah. I think about you a lot, too.” 

In the air had lingered a conversation about one day seeing each other in person, but neither man seemed to have had the energy to speak anymore. 

Dan had been a freelance accountant, running numbers for various local businesses, maybe eight to twelve in total. That had been the original reason he’d moved to London—for access to more businesses. He had hated his work but it had been simple and smart enough, and had paid well enough. It also had meant he could work from his flat, which, for a home-body like Dan, had been more than ideal. He had rarely left his flat, except to buy groceries or to have one-on-one discussions with his clients in cafés or in libraries. It had been a small flat, only three rooms (bedroom, bathroom, and a master room which included everything else), but Dan had found it comfortable as his home and preferred to not leave. 

There had been a big window in the master room, and Dan had enjoyed sitting in front of it at his dining table and doing his work. Though he had felt numb whenever it had happened, he had still liked sitting there when it had been raining. The familiar, hushed chatter against the windows had put him at ease, and he’d been able to go through all of the necessary calculations for his work without straining himself whatsoever. All that had bothered him was the thought that, if he had only rarely left his flat, he would never have the chance to meet the man in his dreams. 

It had been nearing the holidays, and Dan had left his flat with a small suitcase rolling beside him. He had dug a ticket out of his pocket, showed it to the conductor, and then climbed onto a train. 

After stashing his suitcase, he had fallen into a seat towards the back. He had let his eyes slip shut, hoping to nap the trip away, but even once the train had started moving he couldn’t fall asleep. 

So he had opened his eyes, and that’s when he saw him. 

He was about halfway down the train, on an aisle seat opposite Dan’s. The train had seats facing either direction, presumably so larger groups of people could stick together and converse, and the man happened to be in one of the seats that faced Dan’s. 

They stared at each other. Wide eyes. From this distance, Dan couldn’t see the Payne’s grey, but he didn’t think he needed to. 

He wondered if he was dreaming, and he blinked rapidly several times. 

For two hours, he wondered if he should go over to talk to the man, but he didn’t do it, and then his stop—his hometown—arrived. He considered going over in the last moment to ask for the man’s number—but what if the man didn’t recognize Dan? What if he was only staring because Dan was staring? 

So Dan got off of the train, suitcase in hand, and took a taxi to his old house. There was a gentle snow, and, even if it wasn’t quite like the rain, Dan found himself in tears as he watched his hometown roll by. 

* 

_There was thread hanging_ all around from the ceiling—long, white strands of several meters length—and their tips just barely brushed against Dan’s shoulders as he walked through the room towards the man. He stopped a short distance away. 

“I think I saw you today,” Dan said, and the man looked up from where he was seated on the floor. His eyes landed on Dan and brightened. 

“I thought maybe I wouldn’t see you tonight,” the man said, standing. He brushed a string of thread out of his face. “I thought maybe having seen you while I was awake would stop me from being able to see you while I’m asleep.” 

Dan nodded. “I was worried, too.” 

The man loosened up, untensing his shoulders and tipping his head, which was weird for Dan because Dan hadn’t even noticed he’d looked so uncomfortable in the first place. “I think,” the man said slowly. “I think… that your name might be Dan.” 

Dan nodded again. “That’s right. And yours is Phil?”

“And mine is Phil.” 

The holiday passed in a blur and Dan learned that Phil:

1\. preferred coffee to tea,

2\. had asked for plushies for Christmas,

3\. got plushies for Christmas, and

4\. was falling in love with Dan. 

And in a moment of great surprise, Dan learned that he was falling in love with Phil right back.

*

 _Dan began going for walks_ in the evenings or sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, even at night. It was a new year, it was January and then it was February, and the occasional snow turned into occasional rain, which turned into quite a lot of rain. Dan liked going for walks at night in the rain. He carried a black umbrella and wore his favorite black coat that he thought made him look like some kind of fantasy character. He liked the simplicity of the look. 

The numbness he felt during those walks through the rain depleted slightly when he imagined Phil. He supposed that Phil reminded him of his hometown. 

It was two years of dreams and rain and London before he saw Phil in person again. It was a cold day, unsurprisingly. Dan had all but given up hope of ever finding Phil once more. He figured he’d lost his chance. The night before, Dan dreamt he and Phil were sitting together on an otherwise empty bus—a bus that was catapulting without brakes down a steep hill. The bus’s speed grew and grew, and when Dan thought it couldn’t get any faster, it did. There was a sense of doom between him and Phil, but only out of the fear that roads typically didn’t last forever. 

“Do you ever feel like dying?” Dan asked. 

Phil frowned. “I worry about it sometimes.” 

“But you never wish that it would just… happen already?”

“Not really, no.” Phil looked at Dan but Dan wouldn’t look back at Phil. 

“I think it’s been a long time since I’ve not wished it would happen already,” Dan said after a moment. 

Phil swallowed. “If it’s meant to happen, it will.” 

That caught Dan’s attention. “You think so?”

Dan saw regret in Phil’s eyes. “I think that’s true of most things.” 

And then there was a horrible screaming sound, like metal bending to metal, and both Dan and Phil looked towards the front of the bus just in time to see a brick wall barreling towards them. Dan woke up a moment later. 

That night, on his walk, he decided to take a rare turn down a road he’d never been down before. It was a well-lit road, with lots of shops and restaurants that were still open despite the late hour, and Dan wasn’t certain why he’d never gone this way before. He decided to stop into a café for a hot chocolate, as his fingers were starting to get stiff and he was sniffing a bit. It was there that he saw Phil.

He was bent over a notebook in the corner of the café, with several pages of what looked like outlines and charts spread out around him. He was writing frantically, and Dan almost didn’t want to disturb him, but at the same time, he knew this could be his last chance. 

Without a word, he marched up to the table and sat down across from Phil, who looked up at the sound of the scraping chair.

They stared at each other without speaking for a long time, as was apparently protocol. 

Eventually, Phil said, “It’s you.” 

And Dan said, “It’s you,” and the world ended around them, because it didn’t matter anymore. 

*

 _They talked for hours_ until Phil invited Dan over to his apartment. “It’s very close by,” Phil said. On the walk over, they each had cups of hot chocolate, and Dan held his umbrella between them and Phil kept his closed at his side. Their shoulders brushed once, and then when neither of them made a move to put distance between them, their shoulders stayed pressed together. 

They climbed four flights of stairs to get to Phil’s flat, and Dan tried hard to keep his breathing quiet even though he was exerted. Once they were through Phil’s front door, Phil took Dan’s umbrella, which was dripping, and propped it up in a corner beside his own. Dan looked around, not surprised at all by what he saw. 

Phil’s flat was unkempt, with papers and the odd clothing item strewn about, but overall clean. There were vividly green or red plants on a lot of the surfaces, some spilling over onto the floors and others hanging from the high ceiling. A large window, larger than the kinds of windows you often see in coffee shops, took up one wall, and it was freckled with rain drops. Though they were only on the fifth story, the view of the surrounding streets was quite spectacular, and Dan found himself wanting to drop everything just to look outside. 

Phil said something but it was muffled and quiet and Dan stepped towards the window, blinking back tears because the street lamps were beautiful and golden and the light reflected off of the wet pavement, and some of the windows in the buildings across the street were lit up and it looked like a storybook—the yellow against the dark blue and black streets and skies—but he didn’t want to cry in front of Phil. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned to the other man. 

“I can’t believe you live here,” he said. 

Phil was closer than he expected, standing maybe a foot or two away. 

“It was a trash bin when I moved in, but I’ve done my best to make it home.” 

“It is home,” Dan said immediately. “Wow, is it home.” 

They looked at each other, and to Dan’s surprise, he saw that Phil’s eyes weren’t really Payne’s grey at all, but a shady, pale blue. He leaned in without realizing, and saw there were gold flecks near the pupil. Storybook. 

They’re kissing before Dan knows it and he feels it all over his skin, and he feels it all over the room because he doesn’t know where his body ends and the floor begins. He can’t even feel Phil against him but he knows he’s there, he knows, he knows. It’s indescribable and they melt into a single entity of space, of something ethereal but physical and overwhelmingly _big._

Phil falls backwards and Dan just has to trust that he knows where he’s going, and it’s fine because there was a sofa there and they’re close and Dan is thinking, This is how I’m meant to be, here, on top of Phil with him between my legs, with him and I extending through our little world like the veins have shot out of our fingertips and snaked through the floorboards and the walls. 

And we’re taking off each other’s clothes and Phil is slick with sweat, and I can hear the rain against the window picking up in intensity and his fingers are dancing up my arm and I’m surrounding him, sinking down around him and enveloping him, and he’s gasping against my neck and jaw and ear and the plants are breathing into our bloodstream. 

Our hands, our lives, our dreams, we spin and intertwine and walk together, and the rain means everything because it is a part of the world we've created, and our futures now have been knitted as one, and soon, some day shortly hereafter, we will go forward under wet, white skies and we will see all that we can do with ourselves, and then as if it were fate we will tear each other to pieces and tape them back together again, wrong, and then we will be people who cannot be apart, people who need each other to go on, people whose lungs are cut and stifled by each other's oxygen. It will be better, so much better than what I've felt before, but it will also be so much worse. I stare at Phil as we lay together and I know this, I can see it like I'm watching a movie, but still I pull him closer and bite his neck, determined to cry in the rain.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I really put myself out here with this and tried something new, so I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know what you thought! <3


End file.
